Normal
by Viper-Rock
Summary: He just wanted to be normal.


Disclaimer: Not mine.

Normal

There was a reason Samuel Witwicky wanted nothing more than to be normal. More than one reason, actually, for him to want to fit in.

Mainly, those reasons stemmed from when he was a child, just starting gradeschool, and already a prime target for bullies and brats. He was pushed, tripped, or kicked as he walked by any number of people, and every other day he was tricked out of his lunch or snack.

He didn't want to tell his parents, or the teacher. He wasn't a weakling. Samuel Witwicky wouldn't be beaten by the loss of a lunch or two.

Those were his thoughts, at first. Then he started to think maybe he was doing something wrong. He didn't have any friends, and everyone hated him. Maybe he really _did_ deserve it. He started to lose the hope, the strength, that he'd held on to in the beginning. The hope that _someone_ would want to be his friend. Or, at least, would be nice to him because they liked him, and not because they wanted the nice lunch his mother made special for him every day.

Just as he started to think that he was destined to be nothing but a punching bag, a girl in his class ambushed him, and told him she was tired of seeing him get pushed around. Her name was Mikaela, and Sam knew from the look on her face she would never talk to him again after that day. She wasn't helping him because she liked him. She pitied him, and was genuinely tired of watching him give in time and again.

She told him, in no uncertain terms, that he stood out too much. He smiled too much, talked too much, felt too much, and everything he thought showed on his face. If he didn't want to get picked on, didn't want to be the unwelcome center of attention, he'd better learn to blend in, to be normal. If it wasn't fun, they wouldn't pick on him.

He remembered her advice, and she never talked to him again. He looked at the other kids, looked at himself, and behaved a little differently.

And Sam was thankful, because it worked better than he'd hoped. All but a few of his classmates completely forgot about him. The few who remained just liked to see him get worked up, every time they got near him. But Sam was never able to fully hide his emotions, no matter how hard he tried. His fear of them kept them coming back.

He learned to deal with it, though he never stopped wishing he could be just that extra bit more normal. If he was just a little more normal, those last few tormentors would give up, and leave him alone.

When he met Miles, two years later, Sam scared himself. His first act towards Miles had been to shove him over, and take his dessert off his tray. As he was getting into bed that night, and his mother was tucking him in, he sleepily asked if he could take two brownies to school the next day, and said he needed to apologize to someone when she asked him why he needed two. And after Sam gave Miles his extra brownie in apology, Miles latched onto Sam and didn't let go.

While Miles wasn't the best first friend Sam would have chosen, he wasn't about to chase him away. He remembered being rescued by Mikaela, and knew that he would have acted the same way towards her, had she been even remotely welcoming of him.

Sam learned from Miles, too, just as he had from Mikaela. Miles had a vastly different approach, but Sam tried, all the same. Any tactics that could keep him from being a target were tactics he wanted to learn.

Nothing about Miles, from his braces to his outrageously colored sneakers, fit the definition of "normal", as Sam viewed it. He drew attention, laughed constantly, and was always moving, even when they were supposed to be working quietly. Miles laughed off teasing, and even outright bullying, with a hearty good cheer that Sam simply couldn't understand, and couldn't imitate.

He tried, all the same, to pull off the same wit and cheer that Miles exuded, but the best he ever managed was to piss his tormentors off and draw the derisive laughter of anyone within hearing range. Sometimes, luckily, the banter he caused gave him enough time to think of a better escape. He knew it wasn't something he would be able to rely on, but it gave him an option, at least, if he couldn't run and hide.

Hanging out with Miles on a regular basis, "normal" began to shift a few degrees, and incorporate a few bits of excitement, though Sam still berated his friend for his "abnormalities", and half panicked at the merest idea of anything strange going on.

For the next ten years Sam avoided the odd and the unusual with a singlemindedness that sometimes worried his parents, and often irked his best friend.

When his car started driving by itself? Sam thought he was completely nuts, and out of his mind. And in the chaos surrounding that week of his life, Sam's idea of "normal" was not only blown out of the water, it achieved an entirely new baseline.


End file.
